Harvey Lichtenstein |

Site Search Navigation

Site Navigation

Site Mobile Navigation

Advertisement

Supported by

Harvey Lichtenstein

News about Harvey Lichtenstein, including commentary and archival articles published in The New York Times. More

Harvey Lichtenstein transformed a moribund Brooklyn Academy of Music into a dynamic showcase for cutting-edge performing arts during his 32-year reign as the institution's executive director. When he arrived at BAM in 1967, the stately 100-year-old building needed extensive and costly renovation; many members of Mr. Lichtenstein's target audience, especially Manhattanites, viewed the neighborhood - the Fort Greene section of downtown Brooklyn - as undesirable.

"It was a risky business, and we often landed in the soup," said Mr. Lichtenstein in 1998 after he announced he would retire. "For all the excitement, audiences and money were hard to come by."

Mr. Lichtenstein's first season (1968-1969) included Alban Berg's atonal opera "Lulu," performances by a number of modern-dance troupes -- Merce Cunningham, Martha Graham and Alwin Nikolais, among others -- and The Living Theater's evening of political protest titled "Paradise Now." The academy, which calls itself America's oldest continuously operating performing arts center, founded in 1861, soon gained a reputation as the place to find new and provocative work, be it dance, drama or music. And audiences grew.

Mr. Lichtenstein became known as a man with a mission. His ebullient managerial style can be blunt and abrasive. John Rockwell, the first director of the Lincoln Center Festival and a longtime critic and editor at The Times, characterized that style in a 1998 article in The Times as a mixture of "the inspirationally collegial and the petulantly dictatorial." Even so, he added, "People complain but, with a few exceptions, they keep working with him."

Some missteps have included Mr. Lichtenstein's unsuccessful attempt to set up a repertory theater company in the early 1980s headed by the British director David Jones. But among the many highlights were Peter Brook's imaginative staging of "A Midsummer Night's Dream"; Philip Glass's "Satyagraha," an opera about Ghandi's youth in South Africa; "The Gospel at Colonus," a freewheeling adaptation by Lee Breuer and Bob Telson of a work by Sophocles; another Glass opera, "Einstein on the Beach," and Mr. Brook's monumental 1987 staging of "The Mahabharata," a nine-hour dramatic voyage through Hindu theology and mythology.

One of the most important milestones of Mr. Lichtenstein's tenure has been the Next Wave Festival, which he formally established in 1983 and which quickly became a prime showcase for the avant-garde, with the accent on dance and drama.

Mr. Lichtenstein was born on April 9, 1929, in Brooklyn, the son of a Polish immigrant. After graduating from Brooklyn College, he became a dancer and performed with several modern-dance troupes, including the Pearl Lang company. He studied and appeared with Martha Graham, Sophie Maslow as well as Ms. Lang.

Starting out in 1954 as a Ford Foundation administrative intern at the New York City Ballet, he went on, in the 1960s, to develop audiences as subscription manager at both the ballet company and the New York City Opera before becoming director of BAM in 1967. In 1999 President Clinton awarded Mr. Lichtenstein the National Medal of Arts. After his retirement, he became director of the BAM Local Development Corporation, a multimillion-dollar project designed to create an entirely new cultural district in the surrounding area that would include everything from new theaters to art galleries.

Although the project has run into delays and difficulties, including neighborhood opposition, Mr. Lichtenstein has shown a determination to persevere. "I've got this vision," he said in a 2004 interview in The Times. "I think that my job is to keep the real heart and soul and core of the plan alive."